


The Futurist And His Legacies

by XtaticPearl



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Mentor Tony Stark, Tony Stark And Kids, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 12:49:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8286469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XtaticPearl/pseuds/XtaticPearl
Summary: In many ways, Peter was Tony’s first legacy, even though Harley would later argue its technicality.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm having Emotions about Tony & kids, so you guys get drabbles :D

When Tony started out as a public persona, he learnt quite quickly that his fame stemmed from his name. He was a legacy, a heir of the rights and wrongs from the Stark culture, a back to carry the ideas for the future.

When his future took a turn for the bleak in Afghanistan, he learnt that his name was only as good as his ideas, and his ideas were only as worthy as his intentions. His belief in legacies strengthened in a dark cave with a box of scraps at his feet and a metal arc in his heart. However he would survive that darkness, he would leave a legacy worthy of the future, he decided.

The plan had a few wrenches thrown in its way with his ideas getting pushed back in favor of collective ideas from a team he was never supposed to be in. From Tony Stark to Iron Man to the Golden Avenger to Stark and finally to Tony, he transitioned ideals, names and impressions with intentions being the only common thread binding all these personas together. He thought that his future lay with the team then and redirected his ideas to grow for them.

Somewhere between being a futurist and being forced to see a perceived future, this thought changed and shattered.

The team’s dream dissolved and the ideas floated in limbo, waiting for a new channel, a new path to reach their legacy.

The discovery of that path came with a reflection for Tony. A reflection of his intentions in a 15 year old boy who had come in when Tony had thought that the present would ruin the future forever. 

In many ways, Peter was Tony’s first legacy, even though Harley would later argue its technicality.

“What would you do?” Tony asked him on an autumn noon, sipping black coffee to match the boy’s cinnamon preference.

“I -” Peter paused mid-swallow and looked between Tony and the floating holographs of coding for the latest attempt at CEASE, the pure-energy based barrier technology to counter portals of space.

Tony raised an eyebrow at the hesitance that made Peter clear his throat before he began his rant of suggestions that only grew stronger and more enthused as the young boy lost himself in the excitement of science.

Tony leaned back and watched the future take shape with the first semblance of peace - not because of the mechanics, but because of the man growing in front of him.

His role as a mentor grew carefully and with an eclectic mixture of distance and attachment to the phase where involvement of another mind was inevitable. When young Lila came to visit Rhodey at the Compound and got hooked to the latest prosthetic-supporting armor instead of the latest X-Box game on, Tony knew that he had one more responsibility to guide. Peter and Lila reminded him of a younger Tony and Rhodey bickering over physics assignments in an MIT dorm.

He never said it out loud. He kept an eye over them and gave them what they needed. Their insistent visits to the Compound made him feel that they understood.

The entry of young Cassie Lang happened with the inclusion of Hope Van Dyne in the newly formed Avengers team. Hope bore resemblance to her mother , someone Tony had learnt about from old SHIELD files,  in both spirit and looks and got along with Carol Danvers like a house on fire. Maybe it was the strength of will, maybe it was the will of change - whatever it was, they helped rebuild a dream that Tony had once tried saving. During one of her visits, Hope brought in a brunette woman and a young girl with curious eyes and a familiar air. Tony learnt of Cassandra ‘Cassie’ Lang from her mother and watched as the young dynamite observed the Compound with a look of interest. 

He offered her one of the Iron Man merchandise toys to play with. She had no qualms about calling it ugly. It was only when she introduced him to a really ugly bunny toy that he understood that the girl could see the good in what the world saw as ugly, something he knew took decades for people to accept. Tony saw as she became fast friends with Friday and in turn was forced to meet and greet Cassie’s dad’s AI, JOEY. 

Tony found the answer to a question he had asked Scott Lang through Cassie. Who was Scott? The father of a beautiful future. This realization made it easier for Tony to become friends with the Ant Man when he came back from a ‘vacation’ in hiding.

Harley’s return was accidental and in most ways not happy. The young boy’s hands clenched on his younger sister’s shoulder as Tony read the letter a deceased mother had written him, in hopes that he would make the right choice. Death made people bitter - this was a fact Tony was intimately familiar with. Death of a parent changed people - this was a reality Tony had lived. 

Rhodey asked him if he was going to adopt the young genius. Tony remarked quietly and with a wry grin that it would probably be the other way around.

Harley and Lila made a workshop of a basement whenever they got together. Tony would laugh when they would team up against Rhodey in mechanics challenges, and would inevitably end up teaming with Rhodey to match the number. Peter would drop in more often and Tony didn’t comment on the transition Peter had made from asking suggestions to giving them freely. Cassie would drop in with demands to tinker with the bots and ‘play’ with Friday, a routine that expanded when Harley’s sister Maine joined in.

Kamala came in through Carol, a girl with a dream of hope and change. Tony saw a burning idealism in her and watched Carol be the role model she deserved. When he caught her looking at him for the same, he turned introspective, trying to be a better person for the expectation he saw in her eyes. She tempered his anxiety with realism and he gave her focus for her foundations.

It was Kamala who herded them and pushed them to the bi-weekly lunch dates, which Peter always came late to and Cassie always dragged a new scary toy to. When he caught sight of Peter taking his first sip of black coffee during one lunch, he waggled his eyebrows at Rhodey who laughed himself hoarse when Peter promptly gagged and swore loudly that the concoction was the devil’s stuff.

It grew in bits and pieces, the parts of Tony that he left within these people. These people who would become the future, who would write destinies Tony had only dreamed of. When Riri came along, with her bright eyes, brighter mind and strong convictions, Tony knew that he had chosen right.

For legacies were not in the name of a man or the fame of an image. Legacies were in the minds of a generation who took a genius’ ideals with the same respect as his ideas, who took a knight’s heart from his armor’s facade and built their own stories from it.

Tony Stark had been raised to believe in the future, and live up to his name. He grew to believe in people and live beyond his fame.

In the end, the legacies of a futurist built the future he had lived for and that was all he had dreamed of.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, feedback please! <3


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